News Feature | December 25, 2015

New Tools In Store For Medical Imaging

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Medical Imaging

A peer60 report suggests medical imaging professionals expect to purchase new technology in the coming year.

The latest peer60 report, Trends in Medical Imaging Technology 2015, indicates IT purchases are on the minds of many medical imaging professionals for 2016. 

“Medical imaging is one of those segments in healthcare that has been (and is still) advancing extremely fast but not always fast enough for providers,” write peer60 researchers Chris Jensen and Taylor Madsen. “With these advancements come considerable improvements to workflow as IT solutions are now status quo. 

“Technology advancements in PACS and now with an increasing adoption of VNA's, much higher volumes of images can be captured, analyzed, shared and stored. Unfortunately, in some cases, this is actually increasing the workload of imaging professionals.” 

Healthcare IT News notes 554 imaging professionals took part in the survey and were polled as to what they see as the “most exciting new imaging IT technology.” The top answers, in descending order, were:

  • cloud-based image sharing (26 percent)
  • vendor neutral archives (VNA) (23 percent)
  • advances in dose management (16 percent)
  • clinical decision support (11 percent)
  • universal viewers (9 percent)
  • analytics (7 percent)
  • CAS (5 percent)
 

According to iHealth Beat, when asked what technology they planned to purchase in 2016, respondents said:

  • radiation dose monitoring (49 percent)
  • speech recognition (28 percent)
  • image sharing (18 percent)
  • VNA (16 percent)
  • PACS (15 percent)
  • enterprise imaging platforms (7 percent)